Saturday, June 27, 2015

Blog CXCV (195): Hall of Fame

The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky has a Hall of Fame. My adviser for my MA thesis, George C. Herring, Jr. was inducted into this organization as a faculty member. (The Hall inducts people in two categories: faculty and alumni). "The Chief" is now a professor emeritus, but he has hardly slowed down. The fifth edition of his book America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 was released in 2013. If you are going to read only one book on that war, then it should be this one. I can remember exactly when and where I was when I read the book for the first time: I was shivering under a dinning fly in wet, 50 degree weather in June of 1988 during Ranger training in the Baldy country of the Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, New Mexico. I remember thinking it ironic that I was reading about a jungle war on a wet, clammy day. Needless to say, the book played a huge role in me deciding to become a diplomatic historian.

Herring is the dean of scholars writing on the Vietnam War, but he has many other achievements to his name. He was the president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and was editor of the journal, Diplomatic History. He supervised dozens of graduate students at the MA and Ph.D. levels.

The main focus of this blog is career management, but on this occasion, we will take some time to honor a distinguished scholar. Below is a video that Arts and Sciences made about Herring for his induction:

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About Me

I am a U.S. diplomatic, political, and military historian. I currently am an associate professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. I am hoping to use these blogs to share some of the insights I have learned on how writing, publishing and the historical profession work. These blogs are designed to be of use to historians in general. Even those that do not share my same research interests should find these postings useful and informative.